


The Last One Out

by jinkandtherebels



Series: Western AU [7]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 08:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14745197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkandtherebels/pseuds/jinkandtherebels
Summary: Shisui meets a stranger in a bar.





	The Last One Out

**Author's Note:**

> Breaking News: Local Series Thought Dead Makes Miraculous Reappearance!
> 
> (and there's 15K+ more where that came from...)
> 
> TW for suicidal thoughts.

.

_2am_

.

It took a minute for Shisui to hunt down a decent place for a drink out here, but he was determined and didn’t have much else to do besides so he did end up finding it: a rundown little shack of a bar tucked into the shadows of the train station.

At first he’d gone there just planning to high-dive into oblivion—drown all memories of the last couple months and then maybe himself after—but as providence would have it, the place’d been in severe need of someone to keep the more seedy customers from raking up trouble, especially with so many people coming and going all the time. So, well, here he is.

Truth be told, Shisui’s still not a hundred percent clear on where ‘here’ is. He sure as hell couldn’t point it out on any map. He’d been on that damn rattling deathtrap of a train all the way down the line, it felt like; getting off at the stop on the ticket means he’s hit the city, Shisui’s pretty sure, but it’s the razor edges of the city—the fringes where law and order and Civilization don’t mean much. Which is fine with him. Feels more like home that way.

He knocks back another shot, whiskey burning all the way down, and lifts a finger for Mizuki at the bar to pour him another one. His shitty little hatbox of a room upstairs takes most of his pay but when it’s slow, like now, Shisui’s free to blow the rest on whatever’ll hit him hard enough that he can sleep later. It’s a routine now: up all night keeping the drunks in line (which gets to feeling mighty hypocritical when he’s eyeball-deep himself), passing out when the sun comes up, then getting up in time to haul ass downstairs and do it all over again.

He’s been here for a few weeks now. Three or four, he’s pretty sure. At some point Shisui feels like he’s gonna start forgetting even that vague sense of time, and he doesn’t know if that’ll be better or worse than where he’s at now.

Mizuki slides a glass across the bar without looking up. Shisui snags it without blinking. Neither of them talk. Mizuki’s no Anko, he’s not about to pry into Shisui’s problems whether he’s curious or not, and Shisui gets the impression he’s not a real curious guy to begin with. Not a bad trait to have in this weird in-between space where nobody’s expecting to stick around for long.

 _Well, just watch me break the record_. Shisui raises his glass to that thought.

The door creaks open behind him—it’s a different kinda creak here than it was at the saloon back home, but still loud enough that no one’s gonna be doing any sneaking. Just as well, because Shisui’s already leaning towards inebriation and it’s almost two in the morning and he doesn’t have the willpower at this point to deal with sneaky fuckers.

The newcomer takes a stool a respectable two seats down from Shisui and makes some kinda gesture at Mizuki, Shisui doesn’t catch it but the guy must be a daytime regular or something because Mizuki starts making his drink without needing to ask any questions.

That’s normal, though, the no-questions thing. What’s weird is when Mizuki puts the drink down and actually speaks.

“My regards to your wife,” he says.

“Fuck off,” the newcomer replies, but it’s affable enough that Mizuki just smirks and moves on to poke at the geezer sleeping on the other end of the bar. The new guy sighs like he’s shrugging off a hundred-pound coat.

“My anniversary,” he says, even though Shisui definitely did not ask. “Cheers.”

Shisui lifts his empty shot glass because he’s not sure what else to do. The newcomer doesn’t even take a sip.

Because the general shittiness of life hasn’t managed to beat curiosity out of him yet, Shisui can’t help saying something.

“Didn’t realize anniversaries were a drinking occasion. Not a one to do alone, anyway.”

The man huffs a laugh. “Don’t worry, I’m not the asshole you probably think I am. I took my wife out to a nice dinner today, wine and everything. She’s asleep at home now and it’s my turn to memorialize as I see fit.”

Shisui’s eyebrows go up. Now that’s a new level of bitter. “Sounds cheery.”

The other guy is quiet for a minute and Shisui assumes that’s the end of it. He motions to Mizuki for a beer this time, figuring he can nurse that for a while—all-night duty is really shitty when you’re smashed, but there’s not much else to do. Mizuki ignores him completely, the fucker.

He’s almost forgotten the newcomer is there until he speaks again.

“There was this other woman,” he murmurs, looking down at the liquid swirling around in his glass. “She could’ve been…everything.”

Shisui leans back on his stool and stretches, waiting for the rest. It’s not the first time a maudlin drunk’s decided to regale Shisui with their life story. And why not? Livens up a boring night without Shisui having to throw anyone out on their ass.

“She came from nothing, you know,” the guy is saying, conversational. “Had nothing—no family, no money, no prospects. She lived in one of those ass-backwards little boomtowns in the middle of nowhere, you know the ones.”

Shisui hides a grin when he nods. He’s not sure the other guy sees; he takes a break from playing with his drink to actually swallow some of it.

He waits a minute, then two. Then, because he’s still kinda morbidly curious, Shisui pokes.

“What happened to her?”

The newcomer goes silent again until Shisui figures he’s just not gonna talk at all. Then he looks up, giving Shisui a good look at his face for the first time, and almost smiles. The expression’s weirdly familiar.

“Sorry,” the guy says. “Guess I must have had too much. You don’t even know me.”

He’s barely touched his drink. Shisui doesn’t say anything.

The guy sighs and stands up without finishing his glass. “Maybe I’ll see you,” he says. “If you stick around, that is.”

“Got nowhere else to go,” Shisui replies without meaning to.

The guy shrugs. “There’s always somewhere. Once you’re this far west, seems like you could go anywhere you want.”

_Not anywhere. Not where I want._

He keeps his mouth shut though, watching as the guy tips his hat to Mizuki and leaves the way he came. One painful creak of the doors and it’s like he was never here, except for the glass on the bartop that’s still half full.

Shisui looks down at his own bone-dry glass and sighs.

He wishes someone would come in and start making trouble. As it stands, it looks to be a long-ass time before dawn.

.

His room above the bar is the size of a rathole, and that’s putting it real kindly in Shisui’s opinion. He’s used to sleeping in stables, which, for all they’re drafty as fuck and never really what you’d call comfy, are spacious enough. Where he is now, Shisui’s barely got enough room to pull his pants on in the morning without knocking his feet into a wall.

But it’s better than sleeping outside, especially with the weather taking a nosedive. Shisui knows he’s damn lucky to have this much.

It’s been a couple weeks and the guy hasn’t shown up again, at least not that Shisui’s seen, but maybe he’s a lunchtime drinker. Maybe he’s not a drinker at all, only comes in on that one day a year to drown his sorrows.

_Shit, if you were gonna regret it that much then why’d you marry her?_

But that train of thought only leads to one place, and remembering Itachi does jack shit for him now, so Shisui’s been trying his damndest to avoid it. Mostly by drinking. He’s gonna end up a bona fide alcoholic at this rate, and after avoiding that fate for so long in a town where there was literally nothing else to do except steal, that’d be pretty depressing.

 _So what_ , he thinks, taking another drag from the whiskey bottle he nabbed when Mizuki wasn’t looking. (Hey, just because he’s picked up the second vice doesn’t mean he’s gonna give up the original one.) _Not like anyone here’s gonna care whether I end up cracked or not._

He sounds like a self-pitying dipshit. Shisui needs a hobby real bad.

Problem is, there’s _nothing here_. Not even a general store he could (ahem) borrow from to keep things interesting. What he eats and drinks, he gets from downstairs. Maybe at some point they’ll need someone to do a supply run, if the trains break down and the usual delivery doesn’t make it, but until then there’s no good reason for Shisui to venture out into the world.

And what would he do if he did? The “real” city, the city proper, ain’t exactly within walking distance—and hadn’t _that_ been a revelation, for a kid who spent his whole life in a town where you could walk one end to the other in under half an hour. He’d have to hire a hansom or something to get there, which with his pay is about as likely as making it to the moon.

But he does wonder, sometimes, when he can’t help himself, what it’d be like. That big shiny city where all the rich assholes have planted their flags. Fancy chocolates and colorful clothes on people other than the whores. Shit, he might even see one of those new auto-thingies some guy in Germany’s cooked up, the ones they’re saying might end up putting horses out of business. Not likely, but it’d still be something to see, and for a minute Shisui gets lost wondering.

Then he remembers whose ticket he used to get here. He remembers _why_ that person was coming here, and who he was supposed to meet.

Somewhere out there in that big shiny city full of shiny suits is Fugaku Uchiha, and wouldn’t he just love one more chance to shoot Shisui on sight. Maybe Sasuke’s with him, the little shit, learning how to do paperwork and screwing around with that blond of his behind iron-locked doors.

But the girl—the girl’d be with them too, wouldn’t she? Shisui still remembers her name: _Amane_ , the girl he hates even though he’s got no right to.

He takes a longer drag from the bottle. It’s starting to sound a whole lot like air inside.

Thing is, he broods, it’s gonna make sense if Itachi shows up eventually. There’s only one train that goes from their boomtown to the city, and Shisui’s tied himself nice and pretty to its endpoint. First week or so he kept sitting up straight every time the train screeched to a stop, his heart clanging up into his throat because he’s a goddamn idiot but at least he _knows_ that now, and he’s got shit he wants to—

Itachi never showed, though, and at this point Shisui figures the old sheriff sent a coach for him. Or maybe the engagement’s been put off a bit since Shisui caused all that ruckus back home. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet.

_Stop being such a fucking moron. He’s married. It’s over. It’s done._

_It’s done._

_Then what the **fuck** am I still doing here?_

Shisui tilts his head back for another sip of the whiskey, but the bottle is empty.

Typical, he thinks. Just typical.

But his ma didn’t raise a crier, so Shisui hauls himself to his feet and runs a hand back through his hair. Time to go back to work.

.

_3am_

_._

There’s no clock downstairs that Shisui’s been able to find but he’s pretty good at keeping track of the hours, so he figures it’s about three in the morning and maybe three months later when the guy shows up again.

“You’re still here,” he says after he sits down.

Shisui, leaning against the bar and keeping an eye on Shiore in the corner—guy never throws a punch himself but he’s constantly rucking up trouble with the rest—spares a second to look at the new arrival with a snort.

“Thought I wouldn’t be?”

The man shrugs. The light is shit in here but Shisui gets the sense, again, that he knows this guy from somewhere. But that’s pretty stupid because Shisui hasn’t been away from home a year yet—not even long enough to stop thinking of it as home—and he’d’ve remembered if the two of them shared any time in that tiny boomtown.

Mizuki pours the guy’s drink without him asking. _Has_ to be a noontime drinker, Shisui thinks; there’s no other explanation.

The guy nods his thanks, takes a sip and lets out a breath that sounds like he’s been holding it for a while.

“You want to sit?” he asks out of nowhere. “You look like you need it.”

 _Yeah, a hangover’ll do that to you._ “I’m fine.”

“Drink’s on me, if you want it,” the guy offers. “To make up for talking your ears off the last time we met.”

And see, this should sound suspicious as hell—it _does_ sound suspicious as hell to Shisui’s ears—but Shisui’s got a good sense by now of when people are trying to fuck him over (one way or the other) and he doesn’t get any of that from this guy. He just sounds sorry and maybe a little sheepish.

Shisui glances over his shoulder, but Shiore doesn’t look like he’s pushing for anarchy at the moment so he shrugs and sits down.

“What the hell,” he says. “Hair of the dog an’ all.”

He thinks he sees a little flicker of a smile before the guy turns and motions to Mizuki. The barman sets Shisui’s usual down in front of him with even less good grace than usual.

“You’re still working,” he warns.

“Yeah,” Shisui replies, “and I’ll be working a helluva lot better when I don’t feel like someone’s goin’ all in on my head with a mallet.”

Mizuki shakes his head but goes back to his silence. He suffers, Shisui is sure.

They drink in silence for a minute, and it almost feels comfortable before the guy goes and opens his mouth and asks,

“How did you end up here anyway?”

Dammit, Shisui should’ve known better. No such thing as a free drink; you’re always gonna pay one way or another.

“How’d any of us end up here?” he says, trying to brush it off. “Shit happens. That’s life.”

The man nods. “I know it’s rude, but I’m curious. I’ve never seen you outside of this bar. When I do it’s only at night.” His mouth twists up again. “To be honest I was starting to think you were a drunken hallucination.”

Shisui snorts again. “Give it a rest with that. You barely drank a damn thing.”

“Maybe I got an early start.”

“Not likely. My line of work, you learn real quick how to tell if someone’s gone or not.”

The man raises his glass halfway. “Fair enough.”

Back to the drinking and the silence. And it’s not like it’s a weird silence but Shisui’s still more than a little wobbly from his one-man party earlier, and the longer the quiet stretches the more he’s thinking why the hell not? They don’t know each other from Adam. It’s not like Shisui’s got any pride left to lose.

 _Got nothing to lose, period_ , some nasty voice in his mind says, _you left that all back home with—_

Shisui puts his glass down.

“Sorry,” he says. “I ain’t nowhere near drunk enough for that.”

The man nods, not looking offended, and Shisui’s more relieved by that than he’s like to admit. After a minute he turns and offers Shisui a hand.

“My name’s Kagami, by the way.”

Shisui hesitates, but he takes it. “Shisui.”

“Good to meet you, Shisui.”

“Likewise.” Shisui drags up a grin of his own. “Long as you keep buying the drinks, anyway.”

Kagami laughs.

.

He keeps coming back after that, and he does buy the drinks, when Shisui’s not using his five-finger discount. If stealing the booze ain’t enough to get him fired then doing it in front of a willing-to-pay customer definitely is, but as long as Mizuki doesn’t catch him at it Shisui figures that’s a problem for another time.

They don’t talk any more about the important shit, or what Shisui suspects is the important shit—Kagami’s girl, Shisui’s laundry list of fuckups—but they do talk sometimes, about the weather or the trains or which regular is most likely to get stabbed before the night’s out.

Sometimes they don’t talk at all, just sit and drink in a silence that feels more friendly than Shisui would’ve thought.

 _Time’s a river._ Shisui doesn’t remember who said that, but it feels right. Time is a river and he lets himself drift.

.

.

_4am_

.

.

“You ever make a mistake and just know—”

_You’re not gonna recover?_

Shisui shakes his head, frowning at himself. He tries again.

“Like, something happens, and it’s so fucked up it just—swallows everything.” He doesn’t really know what the hell he’s saying but the words keep coming. “And then you’re stuck rebuilding from the ground up, only you don’t even know which way _is_ up anymore.”

It’s gotta be close to sunup now and they’re both long gone, but somehow the conversation feels more sober than it should. Kagami’s looking down, sliding his glass back and forth between his hands.

“I know something about that,” he says. Shisui could knock himself unconscious—of course the guy does, who the hell comes to drink themselves stupid on their wedding anniversary if they don’t have some real lively skeletons in the closet? The drink’s making him sluggish in the brain.

That’s why they’re here tonight, after all, the same macabre celebration Kagami was having the first time Shisui ever talked to him. Happy anniversary to them both, he guesses.

“Well,” Shisui mutters, remembering he had a point, “that’s why I’m here. I’m a fucking dipshit who can’t hang on to a single good thing and that’s why I’m here.”

He swallows another gulp of whiskey—they graduated to drinking straight from the bottle somewhere along the way and Mizuki’s probably gonna kill him if he ever finds out, but whatever. Shisui’s been walking that knife’s edge his whole life, one way or another.

“You never told me, y’know,” he mumbles. “Whatever happened to that boomtown girl of yours?”

Kagami shrugs, but the coolness looks fake.

“I don’t know.”

Then it’s like he’s been waiting for someone to ask—and shit, Shisui thinks, maybe he has—and a whole lotta words come spilling out.

“I’d just finished a year of higher education—this was back when the trains only ran half as far as they do now, you probably don’t remember—and my family was supposed to send a hansom for me, only it was held up. Sandstorm a little further east. So there I am, a kid with no idea what the hell is going on or what I’m supposed to do in the middle of nothing with no connections, and then this woman appears out of nowhere.” He cracks a smile. “She says I look lost, and when I ask her how she figured that she just laughs in my face. She laughed so hard I thought she’d strain something.”

She sounds like Shisui’s kind of person, all honesty. He nods but he doesn’t think Kagami sees.

“I think I was probably in love with her right then,” he’s saying. “She offered me a place to stay when she could barely take care of herself. She was quick to tell me when I made her angry, but by then I was caught up in trying to make her laugh.” He looks at Shisui out of the corner of his eye, like he’s just remembered he’s there. “It sounds stupid, I know.”

Itachi’s face floats to the front of Shisui’s mind like trash rising to the surface of water, his always-stern expression fighting with a smile Shisui probably got to see more than anyone else. _And how fucking sad is that?_

Kagami sighs. It sounds like he’s deflating.

“The storm had delayed all the post, but it got back on track eventually. I’d been with her for over a month when the letter from my parents came. They wanted me home. I wrote back and said—well, it doesn’t matter what. I was told in no uncertain terms that she was unsuitable and I was to get on the next train or find myself cut off entirely.”

“You left,” Shisui says, feeling like he’s had cold water dumped on him. He puts the bottle down.

Kagami rubs his hand over his mouth. “I’d never lived outside of the city before,” he says, and the quiet way he says it makes him sound a lot younger than he probably is. “I’d never been on my own; even at school I could count on my family’s support. That life was all I knew—and after all, I kept telling myself, I’d only known her a few weeks. She’d forget about me the minute I was gone.”

He turns to Shisui. The smile’s still there but it’s gone bitter. “It sounds like I’m making excuses. Maybe I am.” His hand comes up to rub at his face again. “I didn’t want to leave her.”

 _But you did_ , Shisui wants to say, and he barely manages not to. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so pissed about this, why his knuckles are starting to go white where he’s clenched them on the bartop.

“But I did,” Kagami says, echoing Shisui’s thoughts with about as much loathing. “I was young and a—a dipshit, like you said, so I left.” He takes a drink and exhales. “Afterward I tried to soothe my conscience. I tried to write letters but all I could manage was to send money. Eventually even those envelopes started coming back unopened, and finally the man who ran the train out there took pity and asked around for me. Apparently she disappeared a few months after I met her, and nobody who knew her had seen her since. They figured she’d gone to try her luck in another town.” He takes another drink.

“That takes guts,” Shisui says, instead of any of the things he wants to say. Kagami tries to laugh, but his hands are shaking a little.

“It does. But if anyone could have made things work, it was her.”

He turns to look Shisui full in the face and the familiar feeling is almost overwhelming, like someone’s shouting in his ear.

“Regret is a shitty way to live,” Kagami says. “I don’t recommend it.”

And now Shisui’s pissed again. “Sometimes you ain’t got a choice.”

“It’s not really about choice. It’s about consequences. I didn’t want to face mine.”

_Yeah, well, I don’t wanna face mine either if it means getting dead._

But what else is there?

Shisui’s been wrestling with this particular mountain cat of a problem pretty much since he landed here, at least when he’s not downing drink after drink to try and pretend there’s nothing to hide from, but the problem’s still there: What else can he do? He doesn’t have the connections or the money to make it in the city, he’s got no skills that’ll be useful outside the edges of a dirty frontier town, he can’t even afford another fucking train ticket unless he turns whore himself. And even then it’s even odds whether he’ll get paid or kicked in the teeth.

He’s got nothing. Even after a year away, everything he has, everything he _is_ is back the way he came.

“You think I don’t wanna go back?” he says, whiskey making the words easier to say. “I’m losing my shit out here. One of these months I’m gonna crack an’ they’re gonna find—”

_Me with a pistol in my mouth._

Shisui stops.

Because that’s what it comes back to, in the end, and he can try to dance around it all he damn well likes but it doesn’t matter. If he stays here he’s going to end up dead, only it won’t be for the same reasons they’d try and kill him back home.

He misses _everything_. He’s too tired to pretend he doesn’t, and the weight of it feels like it might crush him into dust. He misses Anko giving him shit and the smell of the Scarecrow’s general store and trying to see how many chocolates he can steal under a deputy’s nose before he gets hauled away. He misses Flicker even when the horse’s temper is rotten, he misses decking out the stables for Christmas and watching the place fill up, he misses sleeping somewhere he can see the stars if he rolls over; shit, he even misses that fucking jail cell.

_It’s not the cell you miss, you dipshit, it’s not—_

He misses his town. His piece-of-shit boomtown with all its sandstorms and rough winters and equally rough people. His home.

But _he could get over that._

Shisui knows it deep down. Knows that someday, maybe, if he drinks himself asleep every night and fights off thinking about it every waking second, he could forget where he comes from. He could shove it down so fucking far that one day he might wake up and not even remember Anko’s face, or the smell of the desert air when the rain’s coming on. Hell, it’s already happening—sharp, clear memories getting muddy because he never bothered to catalogue the details, because he didn’t think he’d ever need to. Someday maybe he’ll have forgotten everything.

And that wouldn’t kill him. It’d hurt like hell and never stop hurting, sure, but it wouldn’t kill him.

_But—_

“Remember,” Kagami says, interrupting his thoughts, “the second time we met? When I was surprised that you were still hanging around?” Shisui nods mulishly. “Well, that’s why. You have it all over your face. Always have.”

“What?” Shisui snaps. “What’ve I got, if you’re so goddamn smart?”

“Unfinished business.” Cool as you please. “It’s not the same as a broken heart. That fades eventually, and I’m close enough to an old-timer now to say that and know it’s probably true. But if you leave something unfinished it’s going to haunt you for the rest of your life.” He spreads his hands. “Why’d you think I keep coming in here?”

“The great company?” Shisui grumbles, and Kagami laughs again.

“That too,” he admits, and then mercifully goes back to drinking and gives Shisui a second to think. Those five words echo hollowly in his soon-to-be-pounding skull.

_The rest of your life._

The thought stretches out in front of him like he hasn’t let it ‘til now, a road that goes on and on until Shisui can’t imagine it ever ending—a road that’ll drive him stark raving batshit crazy if he thinks about it too hard.

_The rest of your life—and we know it’s gonna be a short one if you stay here, but why? If it ain’t the town, then what’s eating you up?_

_You know what._

Yeah, he does. Shisui’s always been bone-stupid and stubborn, as his ma would say, but he’s not totally blind.

Unfinished business’ll kill him long before the homesickness does.

He looks over at Kagami, trying to drink his guilt and regret away even though he knows it won’t work. ( _Like looking into a mirror_ , Shisui’s head mutters, and Shisui tells it to shut the fuck up.) Still beating the shit out of himself for something that happened what, two decades ago? (He’d been in school back when they were still building the railroad, so Shisui figures he’s gotta be older than he looks.) And what’s he got to show for it, married to one woman when he’s still hung up over another one?

_Who’re **you** hung up over, huh, Shisui?_

There’s only one answer to that, and Shisui hates it just like he hates Itachi for fucking ruining him for anyone else.

Because there could’ve been someone else by now, goddammit, either here or back home; shit, if he’d been able to bring himself to fuck the guy in that whorehouse he’d’ve at least _done_ something worth hanging for.

But he couldn’t do it then and he can’t do it now because every time he sees someone with long dark hair, every time he sees a glimmer that might be a badge, every time Shisui fucking _closes his eyes_ he thinks about Itachi.

“I don’t know what to do,” he hears himself say.

Kagami shrugs. “Maybe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means.” Which is about as clear as mud, and Shisui’d tell him so except his tongue is starting to feel like a lead weight in his mouth. Kagami stretches and groans as something pops.

“The sun’ll be coming up soon,” he says. Shisui looks around blearily and realizes he’s right—all the usuals have cleared out. “I’d better get back before my wife wakes up.”

“’Course,” Shisui mumbles, trying to blink away the sudden blackness bleeding into his eyes. He’s gonna pass out sooner than later, and odds of that being in his own bed are looking worse and worse.

Kagami stands up nice and slow, swaying for a second before righting himself. The movement makes Shisui’s head spin and he closes his eyes against a wave of nausea.

A hand presses his shoulder. Shisui opens his eyes, blinks up at Kagami as he pulls back.

“I’ll be in again eventually,” he says, sounding way too sober for a man who’s been up all night at the bottle. “I hope you won’t be here then.”

Shisui’s never too tired to fake being offended. “You tryin’ to get rid of me?”

“No.” Kagami sounds thoughtful. “But some people settle in because they belong here, and some people never do because they know they never will. I don’t feel like you’re the first kind of person.”

“You don’t know me,” Shisui drawls. “If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s crawlin’ right underneath low expectations.”

“Maybe,” Kagami says again. “But this is the West, you know. You can be whatever the hell you want out here.”

Shisui’s head is too heavy for this shit. He thinks all the words are dragging it down, so he lets it go and land with a dull thud on the bartop. He hears Kagami’s footsteps crossing the wood slat floor and suddenly he remembers the question he’s been chewing on for months, like a really forgetful dog with a bone.

“What was her name?” he asks, turning his head a little on the bar so Kagami can hear the words. “Your boomtown girl. Never told me that either.”

There’s a long enough pause that Shisui thinks maybe he’s walked out already. But then—

“Fuyumi.” Kagami says it so gentle. “Her name was Fuyumi.”

He’s gone just before Shisui passes out for good, and long before Shisui dreams about a different conversation dug up from the deep pits of his brain: being a kid, going places with his ma and listening to them say her name wrong eighteen different ways and always his ma correcting them, patient-like:

_It’s Fuyumi. Fu-yu-mi (the first syllable more like a puff of air than an actual sound—)_

.

Shisui doesn’t remember much when he wakes up an hour or so later, Mizuki smacking the bar and making Shisui figure he’d graduate from petty theft to murder right then if he wasn’t so damned tired. He drags himself upstairs and collapses back into oblivion.

The last thing he does remember is Kagami’s face—still familiar in a way Shisui knows he’s never gonna think about too closely, dark curly hair and a way about his mouth that makes it look like he’s always on the verge of laughing—and the lines of regret etched so deep into his young-looking face it’s like looking at the face of a mountain, cragged and tired and worn down.

It’s like looking in a mirror ( _in more ways than one_ ) and the thought makes his skin crawl. Clear as a bell in the way thoughts are when you’re thinking and you’d rather be sleeping, Shisui knows Kagami’s right. He’s made his choice already—hell, maybe he made it a long time ago and he’s just been holding out this whole time.

 _Bone-stupid and stubborn_. It works either way.

But everybody breaks sometime, and if he’s gonna die he might as well do it where he’ll get to sleep buried under the sand and the stars.

 _I’m going home_ , Shisui thinks, and falls asleep biting back a sob.


End file.
